AT40 Roulette:

A Collection of Casey Kasem’s Best Random “Specials” Selections

​Another three-day weekend a few weeks back! 
It gave me the chance to try another Random American Top 40 Countdown.

​Over the 18 years of the original Casey Kasem-hosted shows (1970-1988), the staff produced more than two dozen special countdowns.

These weren’t the year-end shows, but themed weekly episodes. Such as::

​I figured that random selections from these special shows would give me songs I rarely or even never heard. That proved true in a few cases from the July 4, 1976, special, the Bicentennial look at the No. 1 hits of the 40 years from 1937-1976.

​Part of the fun of using a random number generator? This time, stocked from “1” to “25”?

This is even more the case when the special countdowns themselves break away from the typical fare of a weekly AT40.

​Let’s split this countdown into a couple of parts, to offer more background on the special episodes themselves.

​One caveat: I did not intentionally include multiple episodes with the same theme, like the Christmas countdowns (featured three times) or the “Disappearing Acts” show (featured twice). 

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​As a show that debuted just as the Fab Four were breaking up (“The Long and Winding Road” was in the Top 10 in the show’s first week), “American Top 40” often wore its love for the Beatles on its sleeve. In the wake of John Lennon’s death, the show produced a special in 1981 on the Top 40 songs of the Beatles, together and apart. This No. 3 single from 1966 kicked off that countdown.

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AT40 would air “Top 40 acts of the decade” specials early in the decade, which seems a bit odd: This “Top 40 Acts of the 1970s” show aired in 1974 – but it did give an opportunity for acts who wouldn’t have appeared by decade’s end. Such was the case with White, an especially popular performer through 1975 who cooled off considerably by decade’s end.

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This was Number 38 in the AT40 Christmas countdown from 1971. With the repeated, “He’s everywhere! He’s everywhere!” this is only marginally more listenable than “Ahab the Arab.”

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Casey Kasem clearly enjoyed the intro to this song on the 1976 Bicentennial countdown, No. 1 the week of July 4, 1940: “… The ‘boy singer’ with Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra was a skinny, bowtie-wearing kid from Hoboken, New Jersey, named Frank Sinatra.”

The final weekly AT40 special in the original Casey era was the 1988 “Triathlon of Rock and Roll.” The countdown featured artists – in this case, Robert Plant – who had at least one top 40 hit in the 1960s and the 1970s and a Top 10 hit in the 1980s. (Of all the songs in the 1988 countdown, this one coincidentally turned out to be the most fitting bridge between two songs from the Bicentennial survey.)

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No. 1 on the 4^th of July in 1942: Harry James was married to Betty Grable, who Kasem dutifully noted had “the best legs in Hollywood.” Unlike the 1940 song, I had never heard this song before – not even on the 1976 countdown, which my radio station didn’t play back then because of its preponderance of pre-rock oldies.

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Whew! A sonic whiplash here from the symphonic sounds of 1942 to Ms. LaBelle’s synthesizer smash from 1985. It wasn’tthis song but her duet “On My Own” that qualified her for the “Triathlon of Rock and Roll” special, but I presume the producers wanted a solo showcase for the actual countdown.

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​This came from the “Top 40 Songs of the Past 5 Years (1968-1973)” special. You could tell Kasem and his staff were having fun with this show, referring to Roe as “king of the bubble-gummers in the 1960s.”

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From 1971’s “Top 40 Artists of the Rock and Roll Era.” No. 32 seems criminally low for this artist. At the same time, she was still in her imperial era, so her stock would continue to rise. It was great to hear this song rather than a few more obvious contenders.

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For the 1986 special “The Giants of Rock & Roll:” the AT40 staff polled disc jockeys worldwide to produce an admittedly subjective countdown of the biggest artists of the rock era. The DJs put the big Mac at No. 31. Even if this was their biggest chart hit, I would’ve gone with the more rock-oriented “Go Your Own Way,” “Over My Head” or “Don’t Stop.” 

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This was from the “Triathlon of Rock and Roll.” Today, this would be considered the quintessential “boomer” countdown. Medley qualified through this chart-topping duet from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack.

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Perhaps the most ambitious AT40 special was the 1980 “AT Book of Records” show. It dispensed with the show’s 40-song format, featuring 54 songs in its four hours. This was the 29^thsong included, referencing the record for the most expensive No. 1 song ever produced (at least, as of that time). It took $50,000 to produce the single. 

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From “The Top 40 Songs of the Beatles, Together and Apart.” That show featured 24 songs from the group together (one – “Come Together” and “Something” – as a double-sided hit). Casey introduced this song by talking about how it was played at the group’s legendary Shea Stadium concert, the first by a musical act to fill a baseball stadium. 

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This 1983 special gave an early look at the “Top Acts of the 1980s.” The late Beatle ranked 27^th at that point. Had the countdown waited until decade’s end, not only would Lennon have failed to make it, but Shadoe Stevens would have been the show’s host. Kasem left AT40 in 1988 for his own weekly countdown.

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This was featured in the 1980 “AT40 Book of Records” as the biggest medley in chart history, with these two compositions from the musical Hair. Although the Stars on 45 medley the following year would spend more weeks on the Hot 100, only one of its weeks was on top, as opposed to the five weeks (out of 17 on the chart) for the Fifth Dimension’s hit.

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AT40 updated its “Top Acts of the 1970s” countdown in 1978, and Simon – who placed No. 40 in the 1974 version – moved up 15 places. What made the difference? Primarily, the No. 1 hit “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” from 1976, although he had five other hits in that period, including collaborations with Phoebe Snow, Art Garfunkel, and James Taylor.

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From the 1972 special “The Top 40 Artists of Past 5 Years (1967-1972)” came this song: Which I never cared for in its original version (I loved Joan Jett’s remake, though). I would have preferred “Crystal Blue Persuasion.”

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This song was featured in several countdowns, so it’s no surprise it made the random survey. This appearance came via the 1974 special “The 40 Top British Hits.” In that countdown, 15 of the 40 songs were from the Fab Four. 

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This made the “AT40 Book of Records” show as the longest song ever to hit No. 1: 8 minutes, 22 seconds, split into two parts on the 45. AT40 often played part one during its chart run because it usually couldn’t accommodate the longer version on a three-hour show. (By 1980, when the “Book of Records” episode ran, the show was four hours long.)

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Two years after AT40 did its initial “40 Top Artists of the Rock and Roll Era,” it updated the list. By then, the Queen of Soul had risen from 32 to 21 with hits like “Spanish Harlem,”“Rock Steady” and “Day Dreaming” adding to her discography. This time the show went with the obvious example of Franklin’s work.

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In our next installment: 

… including some Specials we haven’t yet heard from…

to be continued…

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